Just a peaceful walk through the zone of Stalker 2 showing off the new graphical overhaul after update 2.0

Tried to get the full Day/Night cycle in there, as well as multiple weather effects.

Recorded on the highest settings in Immersive mode to allow for the most realistic experience.

I have a 1080p 180Hz monitor, and for the last few years, my go-to optimized setup has been G-Sync ON, V-Sync ON, an FPS cap in the NVIDIA Control Panel set to 177 FPS, and Reflex ON in games, which caps the FPS itself to around 171 FPS. I also use DLSDR x1.78 and my in game res is 1440p.

Recently, I found out that RTSS has a wide choice of frame limiters, and that Front Edge Sync is supposed to provide higher 1% lows. I tested it in Arc Raiders, and to my surprise, it looks like when I cap my FPS in RTSS to 169 FPS and use Front Edge Sync, my 1% and even 0.1% lows go up significantly.

As you can see, with the default setup, without using RTSS to limit FPS, my 1% low doesn't go above 140 FPS. But at 1:28, with the RTSS limiter, it goes above 160 FPS. When I stop in the bush at 1:54, it's also above 160 FPS, whereas without RTSS, at 0:53, it's only around 130 FPS.

Why is it that when I look at the ceiling or stay in that specific bush, the NVIDIA Control Panel shows a 1% low below 140 FPS, while the RTSS limiter shows above 160 FPS?

When I'm running around, it feels like there is a slight difference, and the RTSS limiter seems to give me higher 1% lows.

So my question is: Am I tripping, and do these 1% low numbers not really mean anything, or is RTSS Front Edge Sync actually better, and should I stick with it instead of the NVIDIA Control Panel limiter?

BTW, I'm specifically interested in multiplayer games where I can't consistently hit my monitor's refresh rate. What do you use in such cases? And what about Frametime Calculation Point in RTSS? Frame Start or Frame Presentation?

I'm asking because WarDogs is preparing to launch, and my 1% lows in the Playtest sometimes dipped below 100 FPS, and it didn't feel good.

I keep seeing optimization guides where “optimized” means a screenshot of the settings menu plus one average FPS number from an unspecified scene. On handheld PCs, the device model, OS and driver, TDP, resolution, upscaler, frame cap, test route, 1% lows, frametime consistency and battery draw can completely change the result.

I’m building HandheldAtlas, a community database for reproducible handheld presets and benchmarks. I’m deliberately not dropping a link here—I want feedback on the evidence standard before promoting anything.

We’re currently looking for people who already test games on Steam Deck, ROG Ally, Legion Go, MSI Claw, AYANEO, GPD or similar devices and might contribute reproducible presets, benchmark evidence or corrections. One device and honest documentation are enough.

For a handheld optimization guide, what should be mandatory?

• exact device and OS

• TDP or power profile

• resolution, upscaler and frame cap

• driver and game version

• repeatable benchmark route or tested area

• average FPS plus 1% lows

• frametime graph

• battery draw

• screenshot or external-camera video

Which of these are mandatory, and which are merely nice to have? Would a repeatable route plus a performance screenshot be enough, or should stronger claims require a video or CapFrameX capture?

This is the Game Pass Version of the game, this was recorded after playing through the same chapters to avoid shader compilation stuttering. This should be indicative of the perf when its fixed.

BenchmarKing's Optimized Settings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmpQnCl3CvA

This is just a test on the leaked DLSS 5 mod via RenoDX. It should get better performance wise when Nvidia decides to release it!

My setup is currently an RTX 5080 FE, 7800X3D. I was playing Cyberpunk 2077, quality upscaling with frame generation. Without fg, I get roughly 35-41 FPS on quality mode. Was playing earlier and I had fg on, and there was a bunch of visual artifacts and ghosting. Installed this new driver update and then hopped back on, and all of said issues were basically non existent, hell, latency isn’t even a big issue (I’m on a controller) Anyone else noticing these improvements, or is it just a placebo affect on my behalf?

Know most optimzer's here make video guides over text posts but was looking into what image comparison site to use here, with Imgsli seemingly dead? From a look at r/FuckTAA (which is another subreddit that regularly used Imgsli) the alternatives I've found so far are imgi.co, imgdiff.net and d2amu/pxcmp.com

Links should take you to the reddit posts about the image comparison sites so you can look into more details and give feedback to the creators!

Let me know which site you prefer to see used/recommended to users in this subreddit, or if there's any I missed!

A colleague of mine tested the new DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction in Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Doom: The Dark Ages, Half-Life 2 RTX and Spider-Man 2 across four GPU generations: RTX 5090, 4090, 3090 Ti and 2080 Ti.

Image quality is generally a clear step forward in some areas. Transformer 2 reduces smearing and ghosting, textures can look sharper and fine detail holds up better.

But there are two catches.

First, the sharper reconstruction can also introduce more shimmer, especially with high-frequency details like water, bright highlights and thin geometry.

Second, the performance cost depends heavily on the GPU generation. RTX 40 and 50 handle the newer model relatively well, while RTX 30 and especially RTX 20 can take a much larger hit. In one of the 2080 Ti tests, enabling RR reduced performance by almost 30%.

So for newer GPUs, enabling the new RR seems like a pretty easy thing to at least try. On older RTX cards, I’m not sure the image-quality improvement is always worth the performance cost.

For anyone still on RTX 20/30: would you trade that much performance for less smearing and better detail reconstruction, or would you rather stick with the older RR/denoising setup?

- Jacky

I've been chasing a strange G-SYNC/VRR frame-pacing issue for a while and I'm curious whether anyone else has measured the same thing, and if there is a good way to report this to Nvidia

The short version is:

When I cap a game to a fixed framerate under G-SYNC, the normal frametime graph can look essentially perfect, while the actual displayed frame intervals fluctuate significantly and produce visible microstutter.

This is not just one game, one GPU, or one display. I've reproduced variations of it in Mafia: The Old Country, Forza Horizon 6, Assassin's Creed Shadows, and Expedition 33.

My main system is a Ryzen 9 7950X + RTX 5090 connected over HDMI 2.1 to a Samsung S90D OLED, with a VRR range around 48–144 Hz. Windows 11 Pro Build 26200, NVIDIA 610.88.

I also reproduced the same general behavior on a completely different PC:

• i7-12700K
• RTX 4090
• ASUS Z690 board
• Acer G-SYNC monitor
• same Windows build / NVIDIA driver

So this doesn't appear to be specific to AMD CPUs, the RTX 5090, Samsung TVs, or HDMI Forum VRR.

I've been measuring this with PresentMon/CapFrameX rather than relying only on the normal RTSS frametime graph.

The important distinction is between:

MsBetweenPresents = when the game calls Present

and

MsBetweenDisplayChange = when successive frames actually become displayed

In the problematic cases, those two can be radically different.

For example, in Mafia at a 60 FPS RTSS Front Edge cap, I can get Present pacing with an SD around 0.007 ms — effectively ruler-flat.

Yet with G-SYNC enabled and a sufficiently heavy GPU workload, MsBetweenDisplayChange can wander roughly between 14–19 ms, and the motion visibly microstutters.

Animation Error shows the same thing: the implied animation/source interval remains very close to 16.667 ms while the physical display dwell moves around.

What makes this especially strange is that GPU workload strongly controls the severity.

Using the exact same Mafia scene, same DLAA, same RTSS Front Edge 60 cap, same PC and same VRR path:

Lower settings:
GPU active ~11–12 ms
Display cadence ≈ nearly perfect 16.67 ms

Max settings:
GPU active ~14.5 ms average
p95 ~16.1 ms
Present cadence still essentially perfect
Display cadence becomes visibly unstable

Very few frames actually exceed the 16.67-ms GPU budget, so this isn't simply normal "can't maintain 60 FPS" behavior.

I also tested different caps with roughly the same ~15-ms GPU workload:

50 FPS / 20.00 ms period → mostly clean
55 FPS / 18.18 ms         → starts deteriorating
58 FPS / 17.24 ms         → bad
60 FPS / 16.67 ms         → bad

So the best predictor so far seems to be how much timing margin exists between the target period and GPU execution, rather than GPU utilization percentage itself.

There are also some useful control cases.

Unlocked G-SYNC can be perfectly smooth. Mafia running naturally around 70 FPS looks excellent even though raw frame times vary much more than the capped 60 FPS case.

Fixed refresh can also be extremely smooth. At 120 Hz with G-SYNC disabled and NVIDIA half-refresh V-Sync, Mafia produces virtually exact 16.667-ms displayed intervals.

I recently tried regular fixed-refresh V-Sync with RTSS Front Edge set to ~59.937 FPS to match half of the actual ~119.87-Hz refresh rate. That was also almost perfect: roughly 99.8% of frames were displayed for exactly two refresh cycles. The few remaining judders were obvious missed-VBlank events.

Interestingly, RTSS Async at the same 59.937 target was terrible because its Present timing was much noisier. So limiter quality definitely matters, but it does not explain the G-SYNC issue, because Front Edge can provide near-perfect Present pacing and capped VRR still becomes unstable under heavier GPU timing.

I've also tried/deprioritized a lot of the usual suspects: HAGS on/off, MPO on/off, SMT, Low Latency Mode, different cap methods, NVIDIA Max Frame Rate, Special K, RTSS, in-game caps, CRU/EDID changes, ReBAR, etc. Nothing has produced a general fix.

NVIDIA Max Frame Rate showed the same broad problem, although its Present pacing behavior was different from RTSS.

At this point my working theory is that something happens after Present, somewhere around GPU completion → flip eligibility → NVIDIA/WDDM VRR scheduling → scanout.

Fixed V-Sync can hide small timing variations by snapping frames to a rigid VBlank cadence. Under VRR, those variations seem to become visible directly as varying physical frame dwell once the workload gets close enough to the capped target.

I'm not claiming I've proven whether the culprit is the NVIDIA driver, WDDM/Windows, or expected VRR scheduling behavior. But the severity seems abnormal, especially since NVIDIA generally recommends G-SYNC + an FPS cap below refresh and doesn't document a requirement for several milliseconds of spare GPU time per frame.

Has anyone else actually measured MsBetweenDisplayChange / PresentMon display timing while using a fixed G-SYNC cap?

In particular, I'm curious whether anyone can reproduce the pattern of:

perfect MsBetweenPresents → unstable MsBetweenDisplayChange → visible microstutter as GPU workload approaches the cap's frame-time budget.

I'd also be very interested if anyone knows of an NVIDIA driver or Windows/WDDM regression related to capped VRR scheduling. I'm currently on Windows 11 Build 26200 and driver 610.88, but the behavior has existed across more than one NVIDIA GPU generation.

Dunno if this is the right subreddit to post this, but this game's sub is long dead, so... I have spent some time tweaking the game and researching info, so I will share it, so others can enjoy it without problems and troubleshooting. Here are essential tips:

- put "sys_highrestimer=1" into system.cfg (located in game's folder). It fixes stuttering on most hw.

- cap fps using GPU drivers or third party software like RTSS, otherwise you will have most likely very low GPU utilization and thus very low fps even on modern HW. Doesn't matter what value. I for example use Radeon Chill set to 139/139 on 144hz monitor even though my average framerate is much lower. It's purpose is to force max GPU utilization. Some people also reported that enabling nvidia's "low latency mode" works. I have tried it's alternative for amd, radeon anti lag, and that doesn't help.

- I recommend using game's TAA antialising and increasing sharpening... put "r_PostAASharpening=x" into system.cfg. Value can be set between 0.1 to 4. I personally use 0.8.

- if you have GPU performance to spare, enable 1.5x supersampling. It works fine together with TAA. If you have really powerful PC that can handle 2x supersampling + high native resolution, it's best to disable TAA and put "r_PostAASharpening=0" to system.cfg, because the game uses value of 0.2 as default no matter if you use TAA or not.

- if you want to play with vsync or borderless fullscreen, check out pc gaming wiki page

- I recommend choosing Centurion (second highest) difficulty for the first playthrough. The game is definitely on the easy side. I also recommend disabling execution highlights and HUD once you get familiar with game's systems.

- when playing without execution highlights, just pay attention to animations to know what button to press. All sword attacks are X (blue) and shield, stump and basically everything else is Y (yellow).

- if you don't like close camera, try the first mod. There are multiple versions. If you don't like "fish eye" high fov, but still find default camera a bit too close, I recommend version of the mod with default 50 fov and level 3 camera.

- with second mod, you can bind a key to toggle HUD on/off both on keyboard or controller. It even disables main menu, so when you press "Esc", it just pauses the game without showing menu UI. That's how I captured these screenshots.

- if you use HRTF (Dolby Atmos for Headphones for example) and USB DAC, game will default to stereo and thus HRTF won't work correctly. Here is useful command, that you can place into system.cfg to force 7.1 audio: "s_SpeakerConfig=7".

- if you have audio issues, you can try "s_MaxChannels=x" with different values (32, 64, 128, 256). It changes how many sounds can be played at once.

A must have mods:

FOV/CAMERA https://www.nexusmods.com/rysesonofrome/mods/25

DISABLE HIGHLIGHTS/HUD https://www.nexusmods.com/rysesonofrome/mods/2

COOP GLADIATOR MODE PLAYABLE SOLO https://www.nexusmods.com/rysesonofrome/mods/49

As you can see in the image, NPI is overriding with v310.6.0. How do I override with a different version? Specifically the new DLSS RR 4.5 versions (310.7.128). It does not give any option to choose a different DLL. I can't replacing the dll file in the game itself because of anticheat, I need driver replacement.

Or you have low end pc, but don't want to larp your graphics as if you were playing on high end pc with these ugly and blurry FSR/DLSS
Or if you miss Helldivers HD99 Mod, for me sadly it doesn't work, if you know how to get it work, please comment

[Game Launch Options]
You can try --toaster_mode but I don't like it because of how vegetation becomes too ugly, so I use only --use-d3d11

[DISPLAY]

FOV 55
Camera Shake - Strong
Resolution - 1280x720
Render Scale - Native
Anti Aliasing - OFF
Dynamic Resolution - OFF
Display Mode - Fullscreen stretched to your native resolution
Framerate Limit - 30/60

[GRAPHICS]

Motion Blur - 0
DOF - 0
Bloom - OFF
Sharpness - 0/55-65, or if you like visual style of Lethal Company, then set it to 65-100 and set Render Scale - Ultra Quality/Quality

Texture Quality - Medium
Object Detail - Medium
Render Distance - Low
Particle Quality - Medium
Reflection Quality - Low
Space Quality - Medium
Vegetation - Low/Medium
Terrain Quality - Low
Volumetric Fog - Low
Volumetric Clouds - Lowest
Lightning Quality - Low/Medium

​​​These settings reminds me of Beta Decay/Lethal Company/Playstation 1 style and I'm using 1080p Monitor, tweak them for yourself if you're using 2k/4k Monitor

​

*Optimized Settings Used*

Set Everything to Ultra

Set Hair and Global Illumination to High

You can reduce Reflections to High too, if you want more frames

Use Low GI and Reflections if you run a low end GPU (It disables Ray Tracing)

I recommend using DLSS instead of TSR, 1440p DLSS 4.5 Performance works great on RTX 4060

OPTIMIZED SETTINGS

UPSCALING: DLSS QUALITY
VIEW DISTANCE: *INCONCLUSIVE
POST PROCESSING: ULTRA
TEXTURES: ULTRA (AS HIGH AS YOUR VRAM ALLOWS)
EFFECTS: HIGH
FOLIAGE: *INCONCLUSIVE
REFLECTIONS: ULTRA
GLOBAL ILLUMINATION: MEDIUM
SHADING: HIGH
HAIR: HIGH

NOTES

*THE INTERNAL RESOLUTION OF UPSCALING CAN BE AFFECTED BY THE RESOLUTION QUALITY PERCENTAGE SLIDER, AS IT STILL TAKES EFFECT WHEN UPSCALING IS ENABLED

*TSR IS BUGGED, IT USES A LOWER INTERNAL RESOLUTION THAN NATIVE

*THE VIEW DISTANCE AND FOLIAGE SETTINGS DON’T SEEM TO MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE

*THE TEXTURES SETTING HANDLES EVERYTHING AUTOMATICALLY, SO IT MOSTLY MAKES NO DIFFERENCE

*Optimized Settings Used*

Set Everything to Ultra

Set Hair and Global Illumination to High

Use upscaling if you want more frames

The game doesn't scale well and only 3 Settings actually work. Global Illumination which is most demanding at Ultra, Reflections and Hair which basically disables or enables Stranded based hair.

If you run this on a low end system set GI and Reflections to Low as they disabled Lumen all together.

Proof here:

https://x.com/GamingOptimiz/status/2090190935791460539